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Episode details

Radio 4,06 Jul 2012,30 mins

Amy Winehouse and Katy Perry films; William Fiennes on Joseph Mitchell

Front Row

Available for over a year

With Kirsty Lang. Singers Amy Winehouse and Katy Perry are the focus of two new documentaries. Katy Perry: Part of Me follows the American performer on tour, as her marriage to Russell Brand was ending. Amy Winehouse - the Day She Came to Dingle includes footage of the late singer performing in a small Irish church in 2006. Mark Frith reviews. Singer Sam Lee gave up being a visual artist, a teacher of wilderness survival skills and a burlesque dancer, to learn folk songs. He talks about collecting material from gypsy and traveller communities for his CD, Ground of its Own, and the sounds - including birdsong and drones - that he has added to his interpretations. As Damien Hirst announces plans to erect a 20-metre statue of a pregnant woman in Ilfracombe, and London City Airport unveils what is claimed to be the UK's tallest bronze sculpture, art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston considers the continuing appeal of large-scale art. Salman Rushdie has described the American writer Joseph Mitchell as a 'buried treasure'. Working on the New Yorker from 1938 until his death in 1996, he specialized in portraits of eccentrics, workers, bohemians and their haunts. As a new edition of Mitchell's writings is published, writer William Fiennes and Janet Groth, receptionist at the New Yorker and a long-standing friend, reflect on why his work deserves a wider audience. Producer Philippa Ritchie.

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